


Talking around truth

by Ofbjoe



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caleb Widogast-centric, Character Study, F/M, Minor Yeza Brenatto/Nott | Veth Brenatto, My First Fanfic, Not Beta Read, Nott | Veth Brenatto-centric, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27216811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ofbjoe/pseuds/Ofbjoe
Summary: Friends? Partners? Best friends? Family? More? As close as they are, the edges of Caleb and Veth's relationship are murky.And words are terrifying.
Relationships: Nott | Veth Brenatto & Caleb Widogast, Nott | Veth Brenatto/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 19
Kudos: 46





	1. Say everything without saying it

**Author's Note:**

> Hi...  
> So, I bingewatched CR since march and boy am I obsessed now. 
> 
> Fair warning: this is my first fic and English is not my mother tongue. I'm just trying to have fun and to better myself in this... perfectly normal and not at all stressful year. Hope you like it, y'all!

_Oh?_ Veth thought as Caleb asked her to come with him into the dome to show her a spell he had been working on. She had followed him, not really knowing what to expect. “Oh, sure!”

They haven’t had the time to talk much heart to heart in a while. Her kiss was never brought up again, nor was her confession, nor was what her transformation meant for the Nein. He had said “It is a blessing to have a family again” and “I’ll miss you if you go,” but nothing was resolved. Not really. And she hadn’t push. Caleb was not someone to be pushed. The last time she had, back in Felderwin, he had caved in and let the others know a bit of himself he wasn’t ready to share. In the following days and weeks, though, he had been distant and reserved with her. Awkward. Well … more awkward. It was not a mistake she wanted to make twice.

Maybe the growing distance between them was for the best, she had thought. A withdrawal of sort, as they had done with her flask. With Caleb a little further away in her mind, maybe, just maybe, she could think of Yeza, her husband whom she loved as she was supposed to. Maybe she could think of Luc whom she once believed she could never see again and whom she, even in her new body, was somewhat still half a world away from. Maybe she could think of ways to rebuild her life, her marriage, her family. Maybe she could take time to seriously consider the advantages and drawbacks of a calmer existence, a mellower love, a plainer identity. Maybe she could let this unwelcome romantic love for Caleb wither, and they both could go back to … to what? To a simpler friendship? That should do, right?

_Oh…_ Veth though as Caleb brought his new spell to life. In the dim light of the dome, his hands danced in the air, and his words formed poetry in an arcane language she did not understand. One by one, dots of shimmering gold appeared like blooms in the hut. Hundreds of them gently floating between them and the world. They grew bigger, more translucent, glowing of a radiant amber hue. They morphed lazily into pictures, memories of … everything. Small echoes of time. _Wow…_

“This is amazing!” she said. “With just a little bit of jade.”

“We… We’ve learned a lot,” he said, still reluctant to accept compliments. “ _You_ have learned a lot.”

“Yeah.”

“I noticed what you did with those bolts the other day. That was impressive, you had no help from me on that.”

She smiled. “Why, I wanted to … to show you that I could make a spell too.” In truth, she had wanted to show him her spell for days, her own _Brenatto’s Voltaic Bolt_ , but he never came back on her offer. She didn’t think Caleb could forget things, especially things arcane related, so she assumed he— well, she had moved on.

“You barely … barely need me at all,” he said in a flat tone she was not sure how to interpret.

“Well, I mean it was just a simple … you know… Not like this. This is amazing!”

She noticed his jarring use of the present and wondered if she was missing something. But soon, Veth’s attention drifted to the memories floating into space. Between ghostly images of the Nein together (because Caleb couldn’t forget anything), she discerned a few unusual ones. A circus in activity. A family of firbolgs. A teenager Beau in a fight. A young Jester dancing in her room (and Veth could almost imagine the green of a cape in the blur of her movement). Yasha with her wife. Fjord as a crewman on a ship.

_Luc in her arms, her precious, precious baby boy._

Those images, Caleb couldn’t have witnessed them. He must have visualized them, meticulously crafted them with that brilliant head of his. Each one was so full of care and affection… A gift, one of the sweetest he could have offered them.

_Oh no_ , she thought. This time, no cold moonlight, no prison cell window, no crush. This time, looking at him illuminated by the warm glow of the pictures, it was not his jawline that made her heart quail. It was his clumsy love, his gentleness, his kindness, of which at the time she could only see but a seed. She could now witness it blooming like an entire field of wildflowers. _It’s again_.

As if the dome could read her thoughts, a memory of them, Caleb-and-Nott in a jail cell, floated by. The moon was full behind the bars.

“A long time ago, it feels like,” he said softly pointing at it.

“It feels like it, yeah. And you’ve got Mollymauk in there…” she deflected and paused, not really knowing what to make of it all. “We’ve seen and done so much, and it hardly seems real.”

He sighed but didn’t add anything and he stared into nothingness for a moment. They fell into a silence she felt she had to break.

“I … my hope, it was … you know w—of course it was all worth it, I’ve—the things that we’ve done, all the risks we’ve taken it’s been—has been worth it so far, even if we … even if this is the end or if we forget who we are or something, it’s been … it’s been worth it.”

The mention of “the end” seemed to get a reaction out of him.

“Look at what two small town kids have accomplished … to date,” he said. There was a sadness hidden beneath the statement of their achievement and she realized the conversation had morphed. It was not about the past of the Nein anymore. It was about the two of them and their present. “Much more to do,” he added with a dryness he seemed to immediately regret.

And their future. Well … _her_ future, really, since she was the one on the cusp of leaving.

“Sure,” Veth said, not knowing how to bring up her reticence to a question Caleb had not asked. She couldn’t promise that she would cling to him this time, because even if her heart would follow him to hell and back, Yeza and Luc wouldn’t. She had obligations now, and she couldn’t base her life trajectory on his vague ambitions only. “But it’s nice to look back every once in a while.”

“Impossible not to,” he said with a hint of bitterness, and she remembered that, as much as he had bloomed since she had met him, he was still that little boy in that corner of a jail cell, seeing things through a filter of fire, ash and guilt. If only she could make him realize his own worth … shake off his self-hate…

“No, it’s good, it’s good to look back,” she said with as much confidence as she could muster. “Even back on the painful stuff. That’s how you know you’ve moved forward, and you’re different and better. It’s good to look back.”

Caleb’s silence made her second-guess herself. Had the conversation morphed again without her noticing? Veth was talking about him but was he understanding it as such, or was he still stuck on her leaving? She had no clue. _We really need to discuss this openly_ , she thought, _instead of under the guise of another subject_. Unfortunately, she realized, here and now, under the eye of Vokodo, under the risk of losing their identity overnight, right before the sure-to-be fuckfest of TravellerCon, here and now was not the time.

“This is wonderful,” she said instead. “We should show the others.”

“Yeah,” he said like a man graceful for a way out.


	2. Cooccurences of the word “Need”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Caleb, it’s almost an automatic process to crosscheck everything he says and ears in search of any recognizable patterns.
> 
> So when, after he receives a letter addressed to “Bren” inviting him to a dinner he dreads,  
> So when, after, despite everything, the Nein seem to accept him and begin to plan,  
> When Caleb says “I need Veth,”
> 
> His brain, unfazed by the rollercoaster of emotions he just went through, starts its order of operation. Key-words: "Veth/Nott" and "need".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What I thought would be a "quick and easy side-project" turned out to be a 18 pages long rambling thing. I really wanted a concept of cross-searching words, a bit like in the game Her Story. I'm fascinated by the changing of meaning depending of the context. Anyway, hope you like it.

Caleb Widogast had never intended to become a living magical weapon. No. When he was young, when he was still Bren, Caleb wanted to be a teacher. Sure, he was patriotic, uncritically so, but what he truly loved was the creativity of magic and knowledge for its own sake. There was (and is, he thinks) a beauty in linking distant ideas together, in making patterns appear through time and space, in seeing the echoes of a long-dead paradigm in the shifting forms of the present. Still today, Caleb takes comfort in knowing that what may look as unstable as reeds in the wind in the politics of the day has deeper roots in history, and he sometimes takes pride in knowing exactly what those roots are.

That was what Bren had loved about the Soltryce Academy: the academia. Despite the disdain of his peers for his humble origins, he had loved the milieu. He had thrived in it. His keen mind, a minor annoyance at home where his clockwork brain made him feel every painstakingly boring second, had become his greatest asset. He could remember things better than anyone without any efforts, and when he decided he really wanted to keep something in his memory, he just had to commit. And he had wanted to keep it all, which is why he had a literal library in his head. Hundreds of books, exact, word for word.

With such a treasure trove of data amassed in his mind, the process of academia was far easier for him than it was for others. He could easily cross two references from opposite origins in his head to see them mingle and bloom, and he would sometimes try to find ways to use it. Or track an idea from its most modern occurrence to its oldest mention in a dusty book forgotten by anyone but him.

It’s almost an automatic process to crosscheck everything Caleb says and ears in search of any recognizable patterns.

So when, after he receives a letter addressed to “Bren” inviting him to a dinner he dreads,

So when, after he brings the group to a more secluded area and reveals his shameful and terrible past to them,

So when, after, despite everything, they seem to accept him and begin to plan,

When Caleb says “I need Veth,”

His brain, unfazed by the rollercoaster of emotions he just went through, starts its order of operation.

He is too drained up, too empty. Everything was just too much for a single man. He knows instantly that those keywords, “Need” and “Veth/Nott,” with that specific meaning, form a pattern he is in no shape to process. He pushes it at the back of his mind as the group decide to, indeed, go crash at Veth’s place.

 _Ceviche_. _Right_.

Before he realizes it, he has cast the spell and they are at the Lavish Chateau. Caleb is not sure if he is there or not; he isn’t sure if he is hyper-aware of if everything is in a blur. The Nein awkwardly waits for Jester to go ask Marion where the Brenatto residence is. He feels like he should know, he should have asked before, but he hadn’t.

It has been a day.

Soon, Jester comes back with the address and they all make their way towards…

_Knock knock!_

Never mind, they are already there, apparently. Veth is cheerful, Luc is excited, but Yeza seems fretful over that bunch of weirdos stumbling uninvited into his living space as Jester almost breaks the door. Fjord and Beauregard are making themselves at home.

“It smells so good! What are you cooking?”

“Oh, hand me some of that, will you?”

Everyone is talking at the same time and Caleb can barely keep up.

“I can get some things,” says an overwhelmed Yeza turning to his wife. “I didn’t realize we were having _company_.”

“I didn’t either. They _just_ left!”

“What a nice balcony!” Beauregard marvels. “I could sleep on the balcony!”

“You’re sleeping here?!” Her voice is becoming more and more shrill.

Now _Veth_ looks overwhelmed, which is a rare and funny sight. Jester comes to her help, reminding everyone that they already have rooms available at the Chateau. As Yeza puts on his shoes and heads out, Yasha delicately places Luc on her shoulders. And even if Caleb feels shitty for practically chasing Veth’s husband out of his own house, there is a tension in his neck that has been lifted. He feels like everything is a bit more familiar.

“Yasha,” he opens his mouth for the first time since they arrived in Nicodranas. “Be careful, the boy’s head is practically scraping the ceiling.”

She ducks a little. “You okay up there?”

“Yeah! This is so cool!” Luc is beaming and flexes his tiny muscles. Veth looks radiant.

“Ooh, so strong!” Yasha says with a smile. “He’s a tough boy.”

They put Veth up to speed about both the meeting with Lady Vess DeRogna and the dinner’s invitation from Master Trent Ikithon for the next day. Immediately she and Jester start plotting more and more ridiculous plans to bring chaos and retribution to Caleb’s old teacher. Bomb, mortal poison, shitty poison… Caleb let them go on for a while, but…

“I think our chances or murdering Trent Ikithon in his home are slim to none.”

His point is met with a deafening silence.

“Good to know, good to know,” Fjord says to get the conversation back on track.

“But just to be clear,” Beauregard asks, “if there does happen to be a chance where we can murder him, should we? Or should we just, like, table that?”

“I think we’re following his lead,” Fjord intervene again. “Caleb’s lead, yeah?”

Eventually, Yeza comes back with enough groceries to feed everyone. His entrance is met with more noise. Veth asks Caduceus to help with the cooking, and they all witness with various degrees of concern this giant firbolg trying to squeeze his way into a halfling sized kitchen without hitting his head on the ceiling or breaking anything. 

“I’m gonna just sit. I’m just not even—I’m just going to sit down. Oh no, the floor is fine,” he responds to Yeza’s offer to get him a stool. “This is really low.”

As the food gets done, the conversation shifts towards the price of apartments in Nicodranas. Halfling proportions making for smaller and cheaper living space, that is what Yeza had gotten while they were at sea. Veth decides to just dump him another 500 gold pieces so they get something better for everybody. Yeza takes it with a frown, astonished by the insane amount of money she seems to find just laying around. 

“This bunch, we found in a volcano!” Veth clarifies.

“So you weren’t joking,” Yeza asks in disbelief. “You actually were in a volcano?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” she says. “It wasn’t a metaphorical volcano. That was a real volcano.”

“I thought you were just on, like, an emotional journey with your friends and…”

“I mean, it was also cathartic for many other reasons, but no, no, this was a literal volcano.”

“So this tentacled, multi-eyed beast wasn’t some sort of projection of your internal—”

“It wasn’t a fear of commitment,” Veth reassures him.

The way she says that last bit makes Caleb think she is trying to sooth an insecurity of Yeza. He feels he has been privy to something he should have stayed oblivious to.

“That is terrifying,” Yeza says.

“It’s so cool!” Luc shouts, eyes like saucepans.

“It’s a hard story to tell with Luc around, to be honest,” Caleb says, trying to redirect the conversation.

And he realizes he had opened a can of worms when the others, especially Beauregard, don’t get (or more likely don’t care) why it’s an inappropriate tale for a four-years-old. Luc looks at him like he’s going to crack his skull open to get the full story if he has to.

“We’ll just skip a couple of—” Veth tries to say, but Jester has already begun.

“It was a giant, black, multi-tentacled monster with fire coming out of his skin and he breathed fire and he had multiple eyes and he sent you these mental images of this really scary place!”

“And did you kill him, Mom?” Luc asks.

Veth scoffs. “Duh.”

“Yes!!!”

“Your mom had the final blow,” Jester lies. “She took him down with one shot.”

“Murdered him straight up,” Caleb adds, starting to smile.

“Did I?” Veth mutters.

Yeza is listening intently, almost cutting his fingers in the process. 

“And then,” Jester continues, “and then we were throwing penises into a volcano, in the same volcano, and this god came down.”

_Oh boy._

“Don’t worry,” Veth says, “they weren’t real penises. We made them first.”

“They were real penises,” Beauregard says.

“They were toy penises,” Veth tries to silence Beauregard with something that sounds somewhat worse.

Luc turns to Yeza. “Dad, what’s a penis?”

_Oh no!_

Yeza groans. Beauregard is laughing her ass off.

“There was a gold one,” Fjord adds, “but it got stuck in this woman’s hand. It was incredible.”

Luc is entranced. “What?!”

“For-ev-er,” Fjord confirms.

Everyone is trying to suppress a laugh as Yeza is about to faint from blood pressure.

“Oh, ahh ah—Honey?”

“Sorry, we’ll tone it down a little bit. But—”

But this was not the end for Beauregard Lionett.

“Hey, Luc. Luc!” she whispers.

“What?”

“You wanna learn our secret handshake, though, from the island?”

“Yeah!”

“Just go: ‘Chaos reign!’” she says and reproduce the stupid gesture “masturbating to dicks at once” that Jester had come up with.

“Chaos reign!” Luc proudly imitates.

Yeza is mortified, Jester is embarrassed but Caleb can’t help bursting out laughing.

“Here, here, here,” Veth says to Beauregard in the hope of “helping” the situation. “Give him a fucking firework, take his mind off.”

“Yeah!” Beauregard shouts. “Let’s shoot some fireworks from the balcony.”

“I want a fucking firework!”

And here goes the word “fucking” into the vocabulary of a four-year-old. And here goes Yeza’s sanity for the few months to come.

At the end of the meal, the excitation settles down a little into a comfortably lazy late evening. Well, as peaceful as it can reasonably be with Beauregard, Jester, Veth and a rambunctious four-year-old. Which is to say pure chaos in a way Caleb can’t help but smile at and laugh. Luc is having the time of his life re-enacting his mother’s exploits with all of the Nein as the indulging support cast. The more Caleb gets to see that kid go, the more of Veth he sees in him. Like her, he is impossible not to grow fond of. This whole evening seems to bring a bit of colour back into Caleb’s mood, and he is grateful for it.

Eventually comes the night, and Luc, as the kid he is, doesn’t take kindly to being sent to bed before everyone else, and Caleb watches a small bolt fly from his room as Yeza tries to reason with him. Caleb sees Veth looking tenderly on her husband and son from the doorstep. He looks away.

Caduceus leaves early for a walk, and Jester spends a little time alone on Veth’s balcony. A snickering Fjord and Beauregard are chatting on the floor around a _very_ low table. From her chair, Yasha follows their conversation silently. Caleb has somehow ended up on the halfling height couch like a shipwrecked on a beach. Half sitting and half lying, his knees are almost at eye level. He knows his back will hurt tomorrow he but dreads the moment he will have to extricate himself from that admittedly very mundane trap.

Ah … He’s used to staying in terrible postures for long periods of time anyway.

His keen mind tracks the minutes that stretch as he stares at nothing. Faintly, he remembers similar evenings from his childhood: his mother knitting in a corner, his father reading in another, the comfortable silence of the room, how cozy he was wrapped up with his real cat in his old woollen blanket by the fireplace. It is a domestic happiness he longs for, yet he will never allow himself to actively reach for it again. That privilege had burnt to cinders a long time ago. This, tonight, is simply a temporary indulgence. For his sake, and for Veth’s family, he must care for them from a distance.

_You can pretend this distance is the shape your “loyalty” for her takes, but you cannot “need” someone at a remove. That is not how language works._

This is the moment his brain chooses to remind him of its purpose, and it pushes the results of his query for him to process.

_Because this is what this is about, isn’t it?_

_About need? About loyalty?_

_(About love?)_

FOURTEEN RESULTS: Showing five latest results.

WIDOGAST Caleb, Nott THE BRAVE (Veth BRENATTO), Fjord STONE, Beauregard LIONETT (9 of Dualahei 836 PD, 8:41 a.m., 81 days ago). _Shopping Run No. 187_ , Rosohna: Xorhaus.

“Give me some money,” he says. Both him and Nott need spell components, so they agree he would get them.

“Sure, **how much do you need?”**

“Well, I’m good for the chalks that I will need for us to travel, but if you want to get some stuff, give me… I don’t know, give me fifty gold and I will give you the change.”

“I’ll give you seventy-five, you handsome young wizard,” she teases. Fjord and Beauregard start to chuckle. “Keep the change.”

He is completely dumbstruck, his hyper-efficient brain unable to process that very forward banter. He is more pleased with it than he should be.

“Are you blushing?” Fjord asks.

“Wow. Yes.”

This is a relatively recent memory, Caleb realizes. The others his brain has skip, he can infer what they were about. In the beginning of their relationship, “need” was a word Caleb and Nott often skittered around. When they used it, it was generally applied for things: need of money, need of objects, need of shelter, need of food, need for allies. Sometimes, they used it to describe a desired course of action: need to snatch that scroll before the shopkeeper notice his companion is a goblin, need to play the long game with this fellow or the con won’t work, need to fill up Nott’s flask so her hands stop shaking. Caleb’s need for Nott was utilitarian. He needed not her _per se_ but the things she could provide, such as her expertise to get out of prison and steal some books, her warmth on cold night huddled on the side of the road, her protection against … anything that could knock his weak ass out really.

Before they met the Nein, their relationship had already started to change, and so did the meaning of “need.” It’s a new development to use it as to talk about less tangible things, and when they do use the word like that, it always feels like there is something implied linking the need in question to a context: need of company (for safety of numbers), need for a presence (to stay grounded), need for forgiveness (to move on), need of bravery (to do the thing that has to be done). Caleb had started to need her as an anchor for his humanity, as the first thing he cared about besides himself, despite himself. Nott had been a stepping stone for him to rebuild and acknowledge the good in himself: he quite literally wouldn’t be “Caleb” without her. 

Materially, he had needed Nott, but now, with the Nein around, he should have stopped relying so heavily on her. Yet, he didn’t, and she never stopped looking out for him either. He sometimes wondered if he took the comfort Nott provided, material or otherwise, for granted. In hindsight, he did.

_(Yet, it is Veth you claim to need now.)_

WIDOGAST, Caleb, Nott THE BRAVE (Veth BRENATTO), Essek THELYSS and Mighty Nein (19 of Thunsheer 836 PD, 11:58 a.m., 41 days ago). _Research on Halas’s Transmogrification Spell: Part 3_ , Rosohna: Essek’s Tower.

“… And here is what Nott and I have been working on,” he summarizes their progress on the Transmogrification spell for Essek. “This is my approximation. I’ve tried to fill in some of the blanks… I know that I’m close but I am sure I am missing something.”

Essek listens and nods, and soon, the three of them work on the spell to transform her. Time seems to warp around them the same way their mind warp around the arcane equations. And suddenly, the equation makes sense, in its beautiful messy way.

It is complete.

Caleb can barely contain his excitement. He thanks Essek. He is so wrapped up in his own head he almost doesn’t notice how quiet and stiff Nott has become. He hugs her and the elf, releases them both, and his brain immediately wonders about the logistic to realize such a spell. He itches to try it out.

“Do you want to do this now or do you want to think about it?” he remembers to ask her.

“Ah…” The pause is longer than he expects it to be. “Maybe I’ll just give it a day. Or an hour. Or a day.”

That gets his attention.

**“Whatever you need!”**

Something is amiss … but he is just too high to analyze how just yet.

He joyfully carries her downstairs and they rejoin the Nein. She’s subdued as they all discuss various nothings. It’s Essek who has to bring up their world-changing discovery. When asked about it, she deflects. He can’t figure out why. Wasn’t it supposed to be good news?

Until he gets it. _After_.

_There wouldn’t be anything keeping her away from her family._

_She would leave._

_What of them then?_

_(What of him?)_

His stomach sinks. His skin starts to prickle. Was air always this thick?

Fjord pipes up. “What about this? You’ve done so much with us and it feels like we’re close to achieving a historic peace treaty between two nations. Maybe that’s the punctuation mark you’re looking for?”

 _One last run_. Nott seems to like the idea. Caleb hates it. Pushing forward her departure but setting it in stone.

“ **We certainly need you** ,” Fjord says, far more honest than Caleb feels he could ever be.

“But we—you— you— …” He sighs, trying to settle his panic down. “You know, we wouldn’t ju—judge you if you wanted to stay with us for a while.”

“Or if you wanted to go home,” Beauregard butts in, far more put together than him.

“Or … yeah, but if you wanted to stay with us for a while.”

He can’t help saying it. Even if it feels manipulative. He hates himself for it.

Nott was never needy. Sure, she had itches whose consequences she sometimes needed help to get out of, but she rarely asked anything for herself. She sometimes framed her drinking as a necessity, a way to cope with fear, a crutch to stay relevant, but she never mentioned anything of the underlying problems, the ones that really needed to be dealt with. Even in Felderwin, when she admitted why she had stuck with him for so long, she had framed regaining her body only as something she wanted, something she desired. Restoring an integral part of her identity that she had lost in traumatic circumstances, this thing she wanted more than anything, she presented it as a hope of her, a mere service from him.

For as long as Caleb can remember, their relationship has been about _his_ needs: his need for more powerful books; his need to stay alive, fed and warm; his need to stay safe and stable; his need to accomplish his great goals. “Whatever you need.” Putting his purpose on hold for others’ sake, it’s not something Caleb does a lot. And yet. He had said that to Nott when they were on the road to Felderwin and she was getting more and more anxious by the day, and here again in Essek’s tower. Both times, those words echoed in a turmoil he didn’t understand fully until it struck him in the face. But this spell, this one chance to bring her back to her body, to herself, this was not about him. This was a gift for her, her who would give him anything, her who promised him she would be by his side until he is whole again, her who would do incredible things to keep him alive and happy, her who never complaints even when he hurt her without meaning to.

Their relationship has evolved a lot since the night they met in that prison cell, but to this day, there is one constant: Caleb is still the needy one. What had changed though is that another need has crept up in his priorities, one of his few unselfish ones: _the need to see her happy_. Whatever she might want from him, he will get her. She means more to him than powerful books, more than safety, more than food and warmth.

It takes Caleb this moment when he witnesses Nott terrified and vulnerable to realize that his need to “see her happy” is made of two, and that those two will inevitably clash, are starting to clash already: he needs her to _be_ happy, and he needs to _see_ her happiness.

Those are the needs he acknowledges, anyway.

 _(The need to_ make _her happy and your need for_ Her _will remain unnamed for longer. You are too wretched to deserve those.)_

WIDOGAST, Caleb, Veth BRENATTO (Nott THE BRAVE) (19 of Unndilar 836 PD, 10:42 p.m., 9 days ago). _Dome of Memories_ , Rumblecusp: Forest.

It’s just him and Veth in the dome. It feels like forever since that occurrence last happened.

“I noticed what you did with those bolts the other day,” he says, referring to the spell she just created. “That was impressive, you had no help from me on that.”

A smile. “Why, I wanted to … to show you that I could make a spell too.”

“ **You barely … barely need me at all.”** It sounds more detached than he intended to. Over corrected.

Caleb rallies his courage. He wants to ask her to st—. He wants to ask her if she _could_ st—if she _wanted_ to st—.

She mentions: “ _the end_.” He wants to say something, he _have to_ say something that would—. _Would what?_ He can’t find the words that wouldn’t feel selfish. So he doesn’t.

She talks about looking back on the painful stuff to move forward. Behind her shoulder, he sees the picture of them in the jail cell cross the one of her and Luc, and then they diverge away.

“This is wonderful,” she says gesturing towards the memories floating around. “We should show the others.”

He is a coward.

“Yeah.”

Her name is Veth now.

Veth and Nott look different. Veth is all plump curves, soft angles and warm tones. She moves differently too: less or a darting mess, more like a controlled whirl. More than that, more than her physicality, Veth shines differently. Still nervous, still self-conscious, but less jumpy, less drunk, less extreme. She is a rounder and rounded version of herself. 

She is the same person, though, and he should not have any problem treating her the same he always did. Except Caleb doesn’t really know how to anymore. Why is that?

Her name is Veth _Brenatto_ now.

He feels the same about her name as he does about the tattoos around her eyes. Rationally, he thinks they are lovely and that they frame her face in a flattering way, yet something about her having gems under her skin makes his own skin crawl. “Names are important,” he remembers telling her once, yet something about this one irks him.

Nott the Brave was the name he got to know her under. He had found it quirky: a pun with a touch of irony, because frankly Nott was one of the bravest people he knew. When he learned that the name she had given him was a self-deprecating reminder of everything she had lost and that every time he had called to her he had caused her pain, he had felt sick. But that name, there was something of her in it. She had crafted it, and a part of him wants to cherish it even if she doesn’t. Besides, the “Brave” still rings true to him. More than “ _Brenatto,”_ someone else’s name.

He won’t tell her that. Of course, he won’t. He will simply … call her Veth the Brave.

_Or Veth. Just Veth._

He remembers _Veth_ had tried to show her spell to him before, and he was excited for her to share that with him. Maybe too much. Maybe abjectly so. So, he blenched away and feigned he had forgotten. And she had gone on. Without him. She was smart and resourceful like that. It’s not the first spell she had learned on her own, but the last one he can think of, the Message cantrip, was for _them_ , a shared Caleb-and-Nott secret. Now, he just… She had found her own solution to a problem he didn’t know she had. He feels left out, even though it’s his own fault. And he doesn’t know what to do with himself if she doesn’t even need his input or his expertise with the one thing he excels at.

It’s not the first time she doesn’t need _him_ , but it’s the first time he admits to himself that he kind of wants her to.

Another thing he kind of wish she would do is to call him out on his hypocritical silence. He can’t breach it alone. If only she could force him to spit out what he desperately needs to ask her.

_You wish for her to force selfishness out of your mouth. So not only do you want to be selfish, but you want her to bear the responsibility of it. That is a whole new twisted level of egotism, even for you._

It’s not as if his wish mattered anyway. Veth knew the difference between silence and bullshit: one was for self-protection, the other was for persuasion. She had called him out on the second on a few occasions, but she knew not to pry on the first. So Caleb knows that whatever happens to their relationship, the ball is in his yard, not hers. He is alone in this: he can’t use her bravery as his own when she is the one he is facing.

He has to be brave by himself.

(Dear gods.)

WIDOGAST Caleb, Veth BRENATTO (Nott THE BRAVE), Beauregard LIONETT, Yasha NYDOORIN (25 of Unndilar 836 PD, 8:56 p.m., 3 days ago). “The Future of the Nein,” _TravellerCon Chronicles: Eve of Chaos_ , Rumblecusp: Beaurebar, Village of Vo.

“Do you have any idea of what you wish to do after this?” Caleb asks the Empire kids, letting the merry mood of the festivities wither into a heavy silence. “Because I do.”

“Oh. Well then, why don’t you start?” Veth suggests. “Because, to be honest, I find myself very conflicted as to what to do next. You know, we don’t have a clear path as a group anymore. You know, we have sort of—Ah… We’ve staved off war, at least for the time being. And ah … we don’t have any life or death mission pressing, so… I could see myself going home, but you?”

As she talks, he nervously balls a hand into a fist. He hadn’t forgotten, even if he had wanted to. Instead, he turns to Beauregard.

“Ja, I would like to go home. I would like to go to _our_ home. The Empire,” he explains. “I want to return to the mainland, and I would like very much … for the both of you to come with me, and … a-all of the Nein. But I **_need_** _”,_ his brain hiccups on that word he doesn’t deserve, **“the two of you**.” He looks at Veth but is met with silence. He turns to Beauregard; she might be easier to convince. “I **need** all of you, but I… Whatever happened out there at sea, you know it’s not as simple as that. You know it isn’t.”

“Was super relishing in my escapism, but yeah, thank you,” Beauregard says in her typical caustic tone. “Of course, this isn’t over.”

“It’s not right at home,” he adds.

“So you want to go back and make it right?” Veth pipes up. “We had talked a while back about punishing those who had started this all. But, you know, now, we’re on a tropical island and that doesn’t seem as pressing.”

“Well, we are here to help our friend, and she deserves it. But I…” He musters his courage to state his purpose and hopes it will carry him through. “I feel inclined to return home and understand what is happening at home.” But it doesn’t, as he looks at Veth and almost, _almost,_ begs. “ **And I need you, because you are my best friend.”** He turns to Beauregard, a bit firmer. “And I need you as my partner. To make right.”

If he is being honest, he doesn’t feel like he could do it missing any of the Nein, and he tells Yasha so, but Beauregard and Veth are his critical mass.

It’s Veth, ever careful, who breaks the silence. “We came all this way for Jester, and I—I can’t imagine it—that any of us would say **no to a friend in need, but** …” She sighs, and he squeezes his fist as discreetly as possible. “W— w— what would we’d—What would be—we be doing exactly? I mean, going to Rexxentrum and enacting some sort of vigilante justice?”

“Well, I’m not sure yet. It’s complicated,” he admits. “Some of them seem maybe redeemable, maybe. But we—”

“We could have vigilante justice,” Beauregard intervene. “Maybe we do it all above the board.”

“Sure,” he says.

“How—How would—you mean work for your organization?” Veth asks Beauregard.

“Maybe.”

And the conversation he had hoped to have sidetracks into deputizing librarians and Beauregard as “technically” a cleric that reverse-heals people. He takes a sip of the frothy cocktail Veth didn’t like and watches them laugh. But eventually, Beauregard brings them back on topic.

“Here’s the thing,” she begins. “I—This is all I have is the Mighty Nein. To the point of where I was so desperate to control the situation of how I theoretically lost you all by attempting to sacrifice myself to that hag. Because… I guess I thought if I could control the way that this ended, even if it’s as innocuous as growing apart, that might be less painful. Because even the thought of simply becoming distant, means that that would be the second family that that would have happened to with me.”

Caleb feels the same. His first family is now ash in the wind: he can’t have his second scattered like dust too.

“So…”, she says, “I’m all in.”

“I— I— I confess I’ve been a little worried about the same after this visit to this island.” He realizes after he said it that he had downplayed his deeply seeded fear a fair bit, and he wonders how he cannot seem to find it in himself to be as honest as her. “Well, I—I—I would hope that the others would come. With us.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“But, will you h—” He sighs. “Will you help me convince them if they need convincing?”

He looks at Veth. He knows full well that she is the one that—that has another life to go back to, but he still hopes. Veth avoids his eyes.

“Hone—honestly, I—I’m a bit conflicted myself,” she says. “I mean I de— I definitely want to help, but… I’ve got to go home at some point. A— and not just to Felderwin. I mean to my family. I don’t…”

He sighs.

“Yeah. I— I’d not forgotten.”

“I don’t know if… Yeah, I’d—I—yeah,” she stammers. “I—I want to help, of course. I- I—I love the Nein as well. But, at the same time, I—.” She sighs. “That feeling of th—of—of throwing your arms around your child that you haven’t seen in a long time is … on my mind. And **I need to do it.”**

It hurts. But he gets it.

Caleb is a man of big ideas. When he was a broken runaway beggar, not quite Bren but not quite Caleb yet, he wanted to bend reality and time to his will, find a way to undo fate itself, whatever the risks might be, because consequences outside himself didn’t matter to him. To be fair, he didn’t care much for himself either. But now, Caleb has started to heal and own up to himself. He is still a man of big ideas, but his goal is more akin to a redemptive one: remove the cancer buried deep into the Empire and go out after the Cerberus Assembly, so that no other no-name kid like him would go about burning their roots for the sake of a sick tree.

It’s not redemption exactly. It’s atonement.

He isn’t really sure where Veth stands on atonement. It scares him to be honest.

He has got mixed messages about this over their time together, especially since the Essek incident. Caleb and Essek are very similar, in capacities, in worldview, in personality. When they had discovered Essek’s treachery and his responsibility in the start of the war, Caleb felt particularly betrayed and foolish because the elf was a mirror of himself: he should have known, or at least guess. But as Caleb was stuck on his past failures, Veth, as always, was focusing on its relationship to the present: “You are a broken person who had ill intentions and wandered aimlessly into a path that you had no intention or no idea how to complete. And yet somehow along the way, you found a heart. You sound like all of us.”

A reassurance, a welcoming embrace in the form of words. Veth is good at that, Caleb remembers as a flash of one of the rare times he had screamed at Nott assails his memory.

“So what! I’m a disgusting person. It doesn’t matter,” he remembers saying long ago after Beauregard had cornered him and made him spit up his secret, as unforgivable as Essek’s.

But Nott had simply hugged him, the warmth of her presence seeping through his bones. “This pain that you have, that you wear all over you like a mask, it’s just that, and you can take it off someday. I know it hurts, but it wasn’t your fault. I’m just gonna keep telling you that until you believe me.”

“Are you and I good?” he had asked her.

(“ _Am I beyond saving?” he had meant. "Will you forsake me like I deserve?"_ )

“What you did was awful, truly terrible, despicable and unforgivable—until _you_ can forgive it. At some point, you’ll have to do that. I swear to you that I will be at your side until you do,” she had said.

_(“You are not. I can’t absolve you, but I won’t abandon you for your sins,” he heard. "I won't leave you, probably ever.")_

With Essek’s situation, Veth has been, well, harsher than Caleb had expected. As Essek and the Assembly were in the process of giving back the stolen Luxon beacon to the Dynasty, effectively ending the bloodbath they had started, Veth and a few others of the Nein were adamant that the people responsible for the war should not get off without a proper punishment. And Caleb tries to make sense of it these days because… Well, for one, _he_ feels he deserves a punishment that had never come, and two, he knows firsthand that forgiving oneself is a long process, a harrowing one. Even if now it matters to _him_ , he can’t help but wonder if…

… If his will to atone, to forgive himself, really matters to her in the end. Because she might tell him he is a good man, but he still cannot believe her yet. He is not worthy of that word yet. Will she stay true to her long-forgotten promise and be by his side until he is?

(Even if Yeza is a good man who has nothing to atone for, even if that good man is waiting for her?)

_So this is your brilliant solution? Binding her to an old promise, one that you have some degree of control over? This is still manipulative and disgusting, but more than that, it's pointless: you’re still trying to push her departure forward and still setting it in stone. Even though you still hate the idea. That’s escapism and you know it. You won’t find a better solution until you grow some balls, Widogast._

WIDOGAST Caleb, Beauregard LIONETT, Jester LAVORRE, Fjord STONE, Caduceus CLAY, Yasha NYDOORIN (28 of Unndilar 836 PD, 3:52 p.m., 4:47 ago). “Shameful Past,” _Devil’s Dinner Invite_ , Rexxentrum: Dingy No-Name Inn.

This was it, Caleb thought as he reread the Master Trent Ikithon invitation with shaking hands. This was both his opportunity to put his plan in motion and his last chance to come clean to the group before it was too late to mitigate the damages. Boy, was he not ready for any of that today! But it’s not like he was ever gonna be.

“There are some gaps for some of you,” he says after a long silence. “Ehm. Could we go somewhere a little more private than the street?”

They agree, and Caleb leads them to a cheap and run-down inn: it’s serviceable. A dirty place to come clean in. That seems fitting for him. Sited on the bed, it takes him a few false starts to begin talking.

“There are gaps.” He stammers. “Astrid and Eadwulf w—were willing to do anything that… Ikithon asked of them. And their final test was to kill their own flesh and blood. And they did so.” He pauses. “And—And I am like them. W— was…”

_You are like them. Don’t try to fool yourself._

“Am,” he amends. “Am like them.”

“Was,” Beauregard says in a tone that leaves no place for discussion, even though she is wrong.

“We share a road with a lot of people. That doesn’t mean that they’re all the same,” Caduceus states. “Especially when you take a crossroads.”

“So you—you did it?” Jester intervenes.

Caleb’s heart breaks a little bit. More than anyone, he had hoped Jester would have stayed ignorant of how rotten he is. In panic, he searches for Veth’s support before realizing that she isn’t there. When they had come back from Rumblecusp the day before, they all just sort of separated. Veth had asked him to get a few things for her, and he had assumed he would see her for a little bit at the Chateau, but her empty seat at Marion’s performance that night proved him wrong. She had made an appearance this morning only to fade away from his teleportation circle.

_She isn't there._

_Veth isn’t there._

**_(I need her.)_ **

_Not now_. He turns to Jester.

“I— I— I have considered … uhm … sharing all of this for a long time but ah…” he turns to Caduceus and Jester, “you cherish your family so much. And ah… I— I suppose I enjoyed being seen as I—I should have been. Or—or could have been.”

Jester goes to hug him, and his wall finally breaks.

“I’ve been lying to you. And I am sorry.”

“We lie,” she says. “We lie about things all the time to protect other people. Sometimes to protect ourselves. I don’t blame you for that.”

He waits for her to let him go before clearing his throat.

“Whatever we’re doing here, I… I’ve come in the hopes of atoning. And… That idea has evolved quite a bit over time. And I’m not sure what the exact answer is, but I _mean_ to atone.”

“What does atonement look like to you, Caleb?” Yasha asks. Out of all of them, she is the one that would understand his situation the most. He takes a moment to ponder.

“Well, I—I feel like the things that I’ve seen, no one should see,” he says. “Never again.”

“So we should put a stop to it, then,” Jester chips in. She makes it sounds so simple, and Caleb is not sure if she understands that what he intends to do is not something one can improvise like they did on Rumblecusp. There is too much at stakes to get there blind and unprepared.

“You’ve come a long way since me, you, and Nott were huddled up in that hotel room,” Beauregard remarks. “I said then you had a responsibility and that none of us would see you differently.” She pauses, and the others agree. “No one blames you.”

“Well. One person,” he says darkly.

_You don’t deserve any of them._

“Anyway, I find it hard to imagine walking in there tomorrow and—and … you not knowing the full picture.” He finishes quietly. “That’s the whole picture.”

He breathes hard. They said they don’t blame him, they say that they are supportive of his quest for atonement, but would they stretch their kindness for people that aren’t him, for people that he had cared for deeply long ago, for people that hadn’t had the chance to meet the ragtag bunch of the Nein that had been his personal salvation? For Eadwulf and Astrid?

(He thinks Veth would be okay with it, but he isn’t sure anymore. He tries not to think about it.)

“Ah… I wanna learn a little bit what’s going on in my colleagues’ heads.” Caleb says and sees Beauregard hesitates. “I have to try.”

“You think there’s something redeemable? Think they’re worth saving?”

Well, is _he_ worth saving? He _is_ like them after all.

“They’re worth saving, yeah,” he says. At least, he hopes he is. “Whether or not we can, I don’t know.”

The conversation moves to the beliefs Astrid, Eadwulf and him held that made them commit the atrocities they did, and how deep their beliefs were rooted. And what made him waver when they did not.

“So much time was put into stamping me into a specific shape,” Caleb tries to explain after a few false starts and a sigh. “It was comforting to know your place … and serve … the greater good. But uh…”

His brain brings him back in Felderwin, and Nott screaming in the burnt down apothecary that was once her home. _Well, fuck him! It’s_ your _people that have done this to_ my _people, and we have to find them both._ The greater good. Yeah.

“I— I— I failed my people. _My_ people.”

 _His_ people. The word as well as the apothecary had felt like a brand burnt in his flesh in red-hot iron. Something he can never get rid of. _His_ people are not _her_ people, never were _her_ people, would never be _her_ people.

_( **But I need Veth.** **She is my—** )_

“Feel like they failed you,” Caduceus says, interrupting his thought.

“Yeah, your family sent you off to the Academy, didn’t they?” Jester asks. “They believed those same things, right?”

“To a degree,” Caleb says. “Yes, my parents were very big believers in the Empire, but ah … they also … loved me. As— as— as wholly as your family, Caduceus, or yours.”

Or Veth’s.

“It’s not a failure on your part. It’s a failure on the Empire’s,” Beauregard says. “I don’t think that it’s by coincidence that your core beliefs that you were doing something for the greater good … led you to us and what we’re doing now. _That’s_ the truth.”

The conversation drifts towards the possible complicity of the Soltryce Academy and of the Cerberus Assembly: the Academy, probably not aware of Ikithon’s deeds; the Assembly, some of them, maybe most of them, know.

“Is there a chance there’s more like you?” Caduceus asks. “That got away.”

“Maybe there are more allies out there,” Beauregard adds.

“That’s a very good question. I do not know the answer,” Caleb says. “I spent a very long time trying to stay as far away as possible.”

“Quite possibly not alone,” Caduceus decides.

Well, if others got away, which he doubts but as a hypothesis, Caleb is not really optimistic about their whereabouts. He doesn’t think they could have gotten as far as him and are strong enough to be considered allies in the first place. And even if they did, the trauma, the distrust and the fear would not create allies that work well in a team. Caleb knows he was very lucky to have that little goblin girl to remind him to take care of himself when everything was fear, anger and guilt bubbling in the darkness of his soul. They would have needed a Nott.

_( **Because I needed Nott**.)_

_No. Not now._

“Well…” Caleb says instead, “I take a lot of faith by what we achieved on the ocean. This nation doesn’t need to be … steeped in fear. The Empire has slighted the Dynasty, it has taken a cherished religious artifact from them. Bloodshed is stopped because we merely gave them what was theirs. If that is not a lesson for people in power,” he pauses, angrier than he thought he would be, “maybe they do not deserve the power. Or maybe this system is too corrupt, I don’t know.”

“I think it depends on how deep the corruption has gone. If it’s worth saving,” Beauregard says, and Caleb remembers this kind of political purge is what her organization is about. “If something is too far poisoned, maybe it’s better to burn it to the ground and start something fresh.”

The Cobalt Soul. That could be an ally. He questions Beauregard. Sharply. She answers. Unfazed. He is too tired to take a decision, but that sounds promising. Right now, he just wants that conversation to end.

“Well, tomorrow night can be a first step, but hmm… **One, I need Veth**. And two, we are … rode hard. We cannot show up tomorrow night looking like this.”

Caduceus pipes up, in somewhat high spirits. “The urge to show up in the Dynasty finest is almost overpowering.”

“We talked about going back tonight for dinner and getting ceviche,” Beauregard reminds them all.

Veth has already begun to fade, Caleb realizes. It was a fear of him that first appeared when they met Yeza, famished in that Dynasty prison cell, and it has only grown stronger since. Her background thoughts about her family became a bit more forefront, she started talking more about it, she started disappearing with Luc and Yeza whenever they were in Nicodranas, and now, she has started to disappear even when they are not in Nicodranas.

One day. In one day, she had missed an important business meeting and … whatever that terrible discussion was. And if Caleb was to continue on his path to uproot the corruption that was the Cerberus Assembly, that paradigm changing conversation would probably be a simple mise-en-bouche. Worse was to come, and he doesn’t think he would be able to go through it all without her by his side.

This next arc on his journey would be all about balancing deception and truth, and he knows truth is harder to do and harder to deal with.

Today was a lesson on honesty for him, a rough but important one. His disgusting story was examined and discussed from all angles by the Nein, except that one little bit they left to him to reflect on alone: ‘I need Veth.’ Much easier to admit now that it was a few days ago—must have popped the zit or something—yet it still feels like a taboo, something he could not say again if she were there.

Baby steps.

Caleb opens the eyes he doesn’t remember having closed and peeks around. Fjord and Beauregard are still in conversation, with Yasha still observing them. Veth and Yeza are in the middle of a lazy banter while she cleans up her crossbow and prepares a small bomb for the dinner the next day. His eyes linger on those. He feels transparent, stuck in a liminal space between grounded and lost.

She is happy. He can see that. Or at least, he hopes she is.

There are a few pocket watches on a tablet. A collection probably. None of them seem to work, but it doesn’t matter; Caleb knows it’s getting late. He’ll have to free himself from this couch soon somehow and make his way back to the Chateau. Without Veth. He’ll have to rest in a room too opulently decorated to ever completely feel like home to him. Caleb wonders if today, _just today_ , he could sleep here, on that tiny couch that can’t possibly hold the length of his legs, or on the balcony since the night is clear. Anywhere, really, where, even is she’s not curled up against him as they used to do, he could still sense her presence not too far away; anywhere where she could be one of the first things he would see in the morning, so he could stop his restless brain from worrying about her absence.

She would probably be okay with it if he asked if he could stay, but he won’t. He has no right to impose on her simply because he’s had a bad day. And she and Yeza deserve their privacy.

Caleb thinks about the pocket watches on a tablet. He cannot hear them. He doesn’t need to. The clicking is already in his head, marking subtly the time he has left. The end of things as they once were, forward movement, imminent, inevitable. Changes are coming, changes he doesn’t want, changes he isn’t ready for. He dreads having her walk away from him in the middle of their story, but he knows. He should feel a sense of urgency. Yet Caleb lingers, counting seconds, trying to stretch them.

He loves her. He loves all of the Nein, but she was the first person he had loved in a really long time. He likes her so much more than he ever thought he could, more than he ever thought he would, more than he ever thought he deserved. He had told Nott so, he recalls, after she told him she loved him, just before she became Veth. She had seemed to both believe and not believe him. Maybe because he meant it and didn’t mean it at once. For some reason, it had felt critically important to hang on the comfort of what they were, to not define what they are now as to not be hurt later. So Caleb had lingered. So Caleb still lingers.

_(An eternal and terrible truth that applies to everyone is that love is all about timing. You know that, don’t you?)_

The phantom tick-tock of the dead pocket watches echoes in Caleb’s head. He has to figure out what his need for her means before…

… it fades away.

Caleb only hopes he will be able to be brave before it does.


	3. Lie without lying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of that secret Nott told Beau, everything was correct except for the coordinative conjunction.
> 
> But was it a lie, really?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter one after the last monster of a chapter. 
> 
> What can I say, I love semantics!

“Oh, we’re still doing that thing?” Nott said at Beauregard after a round of shots at the Evening Nip bar counter. “It really looks from your eyes like you’ve been thinking about this.”

A silence where both gauged the other. Chickening out was out: it would only make the monk more curious. “Alright,” the rogue complied. “One more round!”

 _Beau could literally punch the truth out of my mouth_ , Nott thought as they both stalled for time arguing about who would go first with their secret. _Monk shits are terrifying_. Silence was not an option: it had not helped Avantika’s case. Only solution, spit up a secret, and a real one at that.

Nott had to conjure it up fast. A secret embarrassing enough to satisfy Beau’s curiosity but keep her away from things she would rather keep under lock and key. Something short and sweet that she could easily dismiss if ever brought up again. Nott knew she was a terrible liar, so she absolutely had to stick to the blurry line of semantic ambiguity. Work an angle: either something insignificant or something in the past, framed as “long gone.”

OK, she got it.

“Alright…” The goblin took a sip of her drink before settling into a scheming persona. “It’s a little embarrassing, but when I was in that prison cell with… Widogast over there…”

“Yeah,” Beau said entranced.

“For the first few days I… I was kind of attracted to him. I mean, he was filthy, obviously, and very very… I mean he smelled awful, awful … but… I just saw him one night, sort of trying to look out the window. The moonlight was hitting his face and … he was very handsome.”

 _The first few days_ : a truth, in that transition, but so far from the whole of it.

“Yeah, I kind of got that vibe before,” Beau said. “Kind of thought it might be that feeling.”

 _Oh, you did?_ Nott thought, both suddenly terrified of her utter inability to hide anything from Beau and excited about her plan. The bait had worked. Now, for the delicate part: lying without lying.

“Had a little bit of a crush… But then I got to know him.”

Everything was correct except for the "but", the coordinative conjunction.

“And then, kind of friendzone?” Beau asked.

“Weeell… I mean… I am also married,” she dodged, not technically a lie. “ _Happily_ married but, I will say, I have not looked at another man other than my husband quite like that.”

Nott tried to keep that wistful expression that would sell her words the better. That Minotaur in Asarius was quite a sight to behold and … well, her ogling hadn’t been the most subtle, nor has her flirting been the smoothest. So this one was an obvious lie, a bait in the overarching bait for Beau to sink her teeth into, should she be suspicious.

 _Oh?_ Surprisingly, the monk didn’t call her out on her bullshit, neither the micro nor the macro. Which meant … she did it? _Oh!_ _Quick, find something to wrap that up nicely before she can think to prod more_!

“He is very … exciting and… In another world maybe.”

Nott froze. The present tense was a slip-up.

“Another time, another place,” Beau added without reacting to the mistake. Which meant she was already, partially at least, mulling over her own embarrassing secret. 

“Dish the dish bish!” Nott said abruptly before Beau could really process what she had told her.

Beau sighed and stayed silent for a while. “I might have a similar problem.”

_Oooh_ , Nott thought listening to the monk about her quiet crush on Jester. _That is a great distraction!_

For Beauregard or for herself, she was not sure.


	4. One Less Word to Talk about You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn't like the word "leader". 
> 
> She doesn't like not having words at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another "short side-project" my brain decided to blow out of proportions. 
> 
> I feel like this chapter might be more out of character than I usually do, though not for a lack of try: I think I wrote this to understand a scene that bugged me. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope y'all like it, and don't hesitate to leave comments! I'm always trying to improve my writing and that helps a lot!

When Veth heard the rattling at the door leading to the study they shared, she knew it could only be Caleb. His knocks had the same softness as his voice, as his belly, as his character. He came from what he had intended as the space exclusively for the both of them. She had no idea if his choice of this path were to forecast his arrival or to brace himself for whatever he was going to ask her in a room where he wouldn’t be interrupted. ( _If that were the case, should she also brace herself? Since when they needed to brace themselves for the rarer and rarer times when they were alone?)_ Nonetheless, Veth put down the toy she had picked up earlier, slipped in without a hitch to her mask of happiness and made her way to greet her—to greet the wizard.

“Oh hello Caleb,” she said in faux surprise. “Welcome to my room.”

“Hello buddy. Hum…” he started playfully as she made him enter.

He rubbed his hands with an energy that hinted he was there with a purpose, not to simply hang out. Something had been bugging him, Veth could tell. Since he had come to her, it was probably something she had done. _Oh boy_.

“You know,” he said, “before we hit the sack, the thing that you’ve done for so long, that was so charming for so long—.” He stopped, visibly hesitant as to how to bring in the subject he intended. She frowned. “I—I’ve never really been a leader in any—in any sense. When this group got together, I let them think they were the leader and I did whatever the fuck I wanted to do.”

“Good leadership hum—decision right there,” she commented. 

Caleb sighed as if she had completely missed his point. “Now,” he continued, “much like you implored from me, back in the Empire, these are all our friends, mine, yours. We trust them implicitly.”

“We do,” she said. “Finally.” She couldn’t help the jab.

Caleb stayed silent a moment, processing the comment and unable to find a rebuttal on that particular point. It had taken him long enough to realize, Veth thought, but why bring that up now? She felt as if they were talking about two things entirely.

Caleb’s hands awkwardly flailed. “It’s more of an ensemble, you know? I…” he said, visibly forcing the words out through a wall made of reservations “I—I—I am not a leader. I have never been a leader.”

So that was what has been bugging him. Veth had seen it coming, since Caleb never really seemed comfortable with attention or praise.

“Well, you know, there’s different ways to lead,” she tried to explain. “Hum… Some people, you know, lead with an iron fist, like King Dwendal, or through fear and—and mystery, like ah—the Bright Queen. Fjord is very commanding or tries to be ah—with his— with his puny frame while on the boat—while on the deck of his ship. And you lead through sort of soft power, you know?”

The more she talked, the more he seemed to avoid her gaze. And the more he did, the more Veth felt she had to make him understand that he had value, that she really saw him that way.

“Look,” she continued, “we’re on this journey because of you. We came north because of you. We came to Rexxentrum because of you. And I don’t say it like it’s a— like it’s a bad thing, like you’re hum … you’re conniving or—or taking us on your journey. I feel like you are leading this team … hum … bec—because a— as we journey, you open your heart more and more. And in doing so, we—we’re brought along for the ride.”

This was the closest Veth could allow herself to remind Caleb that she loved him. This was the closest she could come to tell him that she would follow him always because she couldn’t imagine herself not doing so. But she was married now, and he had someone else in his heart anyway, so the truth had to stay safely tucked away.

“You’re sort of showing us—showing us the way,” she continued, “showing us how you have become o—o—more open to—to—to new, hum, points of view and experiences and even looking into your own past and- and- and confronting old demons, even across at the dinner table. And that’s very—that takes a lot of bravery and courage and, hopefully, it’s inspired some of these other folks to do it too.”

“ _J_ — _Ja,_ but listen to me,” he said quickly. “In the beginning, when we were travelling together, I was from side to side, top to bottom, a mess, and I think you were trying to give me a bit of confidence and—and help me get back on my feet. I have confidence. I am back on my feet.” He paused to let his last two statements sink in. “And I have surrounded myself with experts in their fields, very accomplished people. And I am confident to rely on them and not lead. I don’t want to be a leader, I never have, but _helping_ , I like, and confidence, I enjoy. So…”

Veth looked down so he wouldn’t see her smile becoming bland, but he did anyway. “You have done me a great kindness and bolstered up my resolve,” he tried to reassure her. “You’ve—You’ve helped me bring back into my own and—and now I’m here. So … let’s just be here.”

She nodded.

He had confidence, he was back on his feet, he had said. Veth’s felt her heart twinge. It was happiness, she told herself. Happiness and celebration. It had nothing to do with the fact he didn’t need her support anymore. Nothing to do with the sudden emptiness that this left in their dynamic and that she had no idea how to properly address.

He didn’t want to be a leader, he said. She knew that already. She got why it annoyed him, she really did, but why did it sting _her_ that he wanted her to stop? Why was she so irrationally attached to that word when it came to him? Deep down, she knew why: “leader” was as much a statement about dynamics as it was about relationships. He wanted her to banish that term between them. She could do that. No problem. Great. She would if that was his wish. But he didn’t suggest anything as a replacement. So what could she say now? “Sometimes words ruin it,” he had remarked, forever ago. Caleb seemed to love leaving things undefined, plausibly deniable.

So where did it leave her? Veth couldn’t support him. Veth couldn’t follow him. What _could_ Veth do?

Nothing, really.

 _Be_ there, she supposed.

That felt like an answer more fitting for a potted plant, but sure, she _could_ do that. Although her slight fake smile hadn’t slipped off, Caleb must have noticed her deflating because he felt the need to continue. 

“And—And _be_ here,” he said. “I made this place for you so that you could stay with us and see your—your husband and child.” He always seemed to trip over his words when he mentioned her family. “But—but also,” he pleaded, his voice cracking a bit, “be with me, and be with them. It’s a circle. There’s nine of us and nothing is going to break that.”

_Nine? Wait… Her, Caleb, Beau, Fjord, Jester, Yasha, Caduceus: that’s seven. Molly? That’s weird contextually, with their scrying and all, but that could work, so eight. Frumpkin as the ninth? He’s a cat, and also not real, but sure, why not?_

“Go with it, go with it,” he said. “I’m the leader.”

She chuckled. Well, it was hard to be mad at him anyway.

“I’m all about it,” she said, “and if we can really truly be together and I can bring my family along for the ride sometime, that’s—I mean, that’s the dream.” Or at least, that’s what it was supposed to be. “I hope we can … sustain it. That’s all I’ve wanted for a while now, and it sounds like you do too.”

It felt like a lie even though she knew it wasn’t. Caleb sighed, and she saw his crisp and pained smile. He had the same doubts she had. So she did what she did best: she changed the subject to something he wanted to hear. “So yeah, we’ll live in the now and we’ll just—we’ll be the Nein. No leader, it’s a round table.”

“Yep,” he said. “Nine sides, all equals, all nine of us.”

“I’m glad that you’ve led me to that conclusion,” she agreed in a tone between total honesty and irony.

“This is a work in progress, our family is a work in progress,” he said. “But I have faith, and I’m not even one of the clerics.”

Veth chuckled and emitted a noncommittal hum.

“All right,” he said. “That’s it, sorry.”

“Well, in the morning,” she said and Caleb hummed. “See you soon. Can you call Frumpkin to get me some hot cocoa for bed?”

“Frumpkin?” Caleb asked almost indignantly. “It is too pedestrian for Frumpkin!”

“Well, I don’t know the pecking order of your—of your pussies around here!” Veth huffed jokingly. “I mean, some … we sent the cat, I don’t know. What do I do? Do I clap? Do a meow?”

“Ah,” he pointed towards the other side of the room. “Well, you pull the ribbon by your fireplace.”

“OooOoh, so that’s what that’s for!”

Veth made her way to the ribbon and pulled, which made a bell ring and almost immediately, a dozen of spectral-looking cats came rushing in from their tiny trapdoors, meowing and muzzling around.

“Ah, Pepper,” Caleb called one of the cats, a black one with white socks. “You’re just the one for this job.” He turned to Veth. “What would you—?”

“Hot cocoa with marshmallows,” she said.

“Pepper, could you get ah … two hot cocoas with marshmallows, and then grab hum—those little—hum—put a little toothpick into one of the marshmallows, like a little bō, and then those graham crackers, you can make little wings in the other one,” he said before looking at Veth as the cat made a noise and disappeared. “I think I saw Jester drawing art.”

“Yeah, yeah… To the Mighty Nein,” Veth said gently.

“To the Mighty Nein,” he echoed with a low voice.

Caleb left her in her room after their shared cocoa, and the silence of her too empty quarters greeted her again. She stared at the closed door for a little while before turning her attention to her surroundings. Everything was so beautiful. The halfling sized furniture, the glass bowls of pretty buttons and colourful gemstones and shiny jewelry, the gorgeous stained-glass window representing her with Luc and Yeza on a country road among wildflowers she could recognize specifically as the one leading to Felderwin, she peered at it all with equally glassy eyes.

Veth didn’t know if Caleb had mentioned the type of magic his tower was. Was it an illusion spell or a conjuration one? (Not that she would have remembered anyway: too technical for her) Either way, as she gazed up at the stained-glass window of her room, it would make sense. Everything there was sprung into existence and imbued with care and love, tangible and concrete like a thing conjured. That is until it was past its use and dispelled. Then reality would crack, and the tower would stop existing as if it never had, an illusion returning to where it came from.

A tower both real and not.

Was there a story about a cat that was both real and not? Something about a box? She couldn’t remember. Caleb would probably know: he loved cats, and boxes, and towers.

Veth sat by the fireplace. With the fire warm, crackling and breathing, it felt less lonely there than in the rest of the chamber.

 _“I made this place for you,”_ he had said.

 _He really did, didn’t he_? she thought, sensing a knot of confusion settle in her stomach as she took in the room once again.

She loved it. She truly did. Everything was beautiful and steeped in love and memories and care and… And it was all for her! How couldn’t she be grateful for it all? He even added to her button collection! Who does that? No one ever did when she was a child; people mocked her for it. No one ever tried to understand her passion for pretty trinkets… Except for Yeza and Caleb.

Her heart throbbed. She missed Yeza. Was she allowed to miss Caleb too? Probably not. She was _here,_ wasn’t she?

That was the thing, though: where was _here_ exactly? In a tower created for her, that both existed and didn’t? In a room made with love to her liking and image or, more precisely, made _to the liking of an image_ , an image everyone seemed to agree was her? Maybe the question was wrong; maybe the right question wasn’t “ _where_ is here” but “ _who.”_ If the stained-glass window of her kin and the chamber filled to the brim with toys were any indications, her quarters in Caleb’s tower were made for a woman destined to either return to her small-town existence or longing to do so. A woman whose happiness was elsewhere, with different people. A woman he felt he had to convince to stay because he couldn’t imagine she had space in her life for anyone other than a family he wasn’t a part of.

That’s how Caleb had pegged her anyway. In a box with a label on it. In a box that she mostly fitted in, but not comfortably. A box in which she felt herself rattle, the same way she felt herself rattle in Yeza’s apartment in Nicodranas.

 _Yeza’s_ apartment. A halfling sized nest that couldn’t accommodate her friends. A place made for a woman whose whole world was her family. A place cozy and nice, but close to the sea and to her fears. A home for them, but built without her, built in her absence.

She didn’t miss Felderwin, not really, but she did miss the apothecary: it was humble by her standards of today, but it was a shared project. Something both her and Yeza had put energy, care and love in. Not a personalized gift for a woman that she was and wasn’t, not a premade abode where she could slip into a premade role when she would be done adventuring.

She passed a tired hand on her face, and she chuckled when it pressed on that point on her down eyelid that made her vision double. There, the two towers, the one that existed and the one that didn’t, were now superimposed. At least, she could still make herself giggle.

The humour in that laugh died as she found out that Caleb had, in fact, made this tower her spitting image: like her, it existed about a centimetre off of reality. Maybe he _did_ get her after all, even if by accident.

Which brought her right back to where she had began. Caleb and her. Rattling boxes made of words and silences. She thought she understood now: “leader” was his rattling box as “Veth Brenatto” was hers. A difference between them was that she felt hers mostly fit except when it didn’t, and he felt his mostly didn’t fit except when it did. Another one was how to deal with the problem: he chose to destroy the word, preferring silence and emptiness to fallacy and misconception, where she preferred fallacy and misconception to emptiness and silence.

She had told him so, that she had found him more open, that she was proud that he’s looking into his past, into the lies told by the old demons he’s confronting. _“Truth” is where he’s at on his journey_ , she thought. She’d only wish that his truth would have left her feeling less hollow, less numb, less scared and ashamed.

The Nein might have said that she was brave, that even as Nott she deserved the comma, but she didn’t. _He_ was much braver than she was; at least, he didn’t dread silence.

And who, besides her, could fear silence? Seriously?

Veth didn’t know if her mood had improved enough for her to get much rest, now that it was about time to tuck in for the night. Would another cocoa help, maybe with a cookie or two? Maybe. She stood up and made her way to the ribbon Caleb had shown her, rung and the fey cats rushed in in a flash, ready to bring her whatever she could want. She instantly spotted the black one from earlier, and immediately, she had another idea, even more satisfying than cocoa.

“Hey, you! Cat! Pepper, was it?”

“Meow!”

She didn’t speak cat. Well, as long as it understood common…

“Pepper, you have a _great name_.”

“Meow!”

“You know, _Pepper_ , I’m sure Fjord is dying to meet you. When he’s asleep, could you, you know, just … jump on him and snuggle right under his nose?”

“Meow…”

“Of course, his allergies won’t kill him! You’re fey, right? It’s not like you are a real cat.”

“Meow.”

“He might sneeze but, you know, it’s just psychosomatic… I’m sure he won’t be _salty_ about it.”

Pepper stared at her looking annoyed but meowed in what she interpreted as agreement and left the room.

A prank mixed with a pun: _that_ was the right way to end an evening.


End file.
